The Iraqi Connection

September 17, 2001

https://www.smartertimes.com/543/the-iraqi-connection

A front-page article in today's New York Times reports that Vice President Cheney "said there was no indication that Iraq was linked to last week's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington. 'Saddam Hussein's bottled up at this point,' he said."

Vice President Cheney may have reasons for saying this, chief among them retaining the advantage of surprise in the event America takes action against Iraq. But it is odd for the Times to just let this comment slide unchallenged, given that there are in fact many indications that Iraq was linked to the attacks. For one thing, an official statement read on Iraqi state television praised the attacks, saying, "the American cowboys are reaping the fruit of their crimes against humanity." For another thing, former Mossad agent Gad Shimron told Berlin's Die Welt, "The name Bin Laden is like a mantra, he is the 'usual suspect,' like Carlos in the 1970's. As far as I know, he is sitting somewhere in Afghanistan, a country with no infrastructure. He has a cell phone which the Americans monitor. Maybe this act of terrorism was his idea, but I am sure that it was carried out by others. Perhaps by a coalition of organizations. Yet they must have received support from a sovereign state. . . .My guess is Iraq. But I have no proof. It cannot be Afghanistan, because it is not a sovereign state." For another thing, there are indications that Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing that was also linked to bin Laden, had ties to Iraqi intelligence. For these points Smartertimes.com is indebted to Laurie Mylroie, who runs an indispensable e-mail list called Iraq News. None of this is airtight evidence that Saddam was behind last week's attack on America, but it sure seems to go beyond "no indication." In addition, the same Israeli intelligence officials who warned Washington in August of an impending attack "told the Americans that there were strong grounds for suspecting Iraqi involvement," according to London's Sunday Telegraph.

No Warning: An editorial in today's New York Times claims "there was no warning about last week's attacks." Not so, according to the report in London's Sunday Telegraph. That paper reports that "two senior experts with Mossad," the Israeli intelligence service, "were sent to Washington in August to alert the CIA and FBI to the existence of a cell of as many of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation." The Israelis warned of imminent "large-scale terrorist attacks on highly visible targets on the American mainland," the Telegraph says.

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